Princess add on/Platinum HELP!

[bridegirl]

HELP!!!!

Platinum Planning at the GF says I can't add the prince/princess add-on to our platinum plan!

They say that platinum is itself as "add on" and we can't add another "add-0n".

Does anyone have experience with this? And how I can fix it?

Thank you so much.

Susy

 

[cleo]

They are indeed two distinct add-ons. Is it the $50 Disney dollars or the seating for some of the shows that you want to add on to the Platinum plan? Since the P/P plan is $64.00 per child to add on, you're saving by purchasing the Platinum plan without the Prince and Princess. You can use your Wishes for a character meal, so all you're missing is the prefered seating for some shows.

 

[bridegirl]

yes, it's the seating that we want

And when we went dec 2003 - we didn't have "wishes" on platinum - just points

Is "wishes" something new?

so....Is there no way to get platinum AND p/p add on? You think disney would be happy to take more money from us!

Thanks, Susy

 

[diswedwish]

Susy,

You would think it would make Disney happy, wouldn't you?
Here's a suggestion - could you split your trip and do both plans?

We're planning to do this in Nov. - stay the 7/5 deal Silver at POR then switching to Plat. at the Poly for 3 nights just to do the extras we really want with the Platinum and still do it within our budget. I think you have to stay at least 3 nights per plan however.

Since you've recently stayed Platinum, would you mind answering a few questions about that plan?

1) You said you use points for meals - do they differentiate between the "snacks" and the meals? For instance, with the Gold Plan you get 3 points per day to use however. So with Platinum you get 4? I was just confused as to how that would work, and we'll be splitting ours up over 4 full days (staying at POP, room-only on our last night).

2) Did you do the spa treatment? To sound unedumacated what is a Swedish massage? DH and I were going to try that, do they let you in the same room like the couples massage or are you in separate rooms?

3) Where is the preferred seating for Fantasmic and is it worth it? e.g. did you have to show up really early to get seated or just a few minutes prior?

4) How does the pre-arrival itenerary planning work? Do you get some kind of sheet to fill out or is it all done over the phone? How far out do they contact you?

5) If you choose an Illuminations cruise, you may have to share the boat, right? Did you do the Illuminations or Wishes cruise?

Sorry for so many questions - lol!!! Any help would be greatly appreciated; we're both really excited about our trip and I haven't been able to find the answers to these questions yet Thank you!!!!!!!!!!

 

[bridegirl]

1. here's how the points worked when we did it in dec 2003. Each person has a KTTW (room key and park pass) with a certain number of points on it. All the points are loaded when you get it and, in theory, you could spend them all the first day if you wanted to.

Every time you eat, they "minus" the points from your card - like a debit card. It was a little confusing at first and no one really explained it well to us. The first two days, my mom always gave her card at every restaurant - and then she ran out of points! (There were ten people in our group).

We had more than enough points for every meal for every day - we just had to learn how the system worked. And OFTEN, even though we would tell room service we were on platinum - they would charge $$ to our room account instead of "minusing" the points like they are supposed to. We had to go back and get all those taken off our resort bill.

The biggest problem with platinum is that not enough people do it for the WDW employees to all understand it. We had a few places tell us "we don't do that" - even though they really do.

The biggest platinum problem we had is that we booked our trip in june, had to pay off the total about a month before the trip and THEN TWO WEEKS BEFORE WE LEFT FOR WDW - they told us we couldn't get any reserved parade seats or speciality cruises or the other great platinum perks because it was a "blackout week" - (the week of NYE).

Needless to say, we were REALLY MAD. No one ever told us that when we booked, or when we had to pay off if full our $65,000. bill before we even left.

We are doing it again only because it is actually a better deal for us than a la carte. But just know that its not necessarily alot less hassle.

2. Spa. Everyone did their spa massage and it was great - just like the regular one they offer at GF spa. This year we are talking about trying the new SS spa. "swedish" massage is what you might think of as "standard" - not too hard like deep tissue massage, and not specific like acupressure massage, just a light massage. Lovely.

We didn't get the reserved seating so I can't comment on that, but they did give us a WISHES cruise which was very nice - and they tried to do a bunch of nice things for us to make up for the "blackout" stuff we weren't getting.

The pre-planning was awful - we planned our whole trip with a girl who then ended up leaving the company without having reserved any of our PS's and stuff. It took us MANY phone calls to figure out why our contact wasn't calling us back - and by that time, many of things were wanted (like CRT) were past the deadline and they told us they were all booked. Needless to say, we pitched a "royal" fit and they ended up finding us a CRT table as well as the other things we wanted - but it wasn't the seemless-someone else does all the work for you- experience that we were hoping (and paying bigtime) for.

This year we are doing platinum at the GF (last year was at the poly) and so far the GF plat planner has been MUCH more accomodating than the poly one. We are also not going during a blackout week this year (I checked this time) so we're hoping for smooth sailing.

Let me know if you have other questions, I'm still trying to figure out how to get my princess added on to platinum.

Susy

 

[diswedwish]

Thanks Susy

I hope this trip goes more smoothly for you than your last one!!

That's what I was hoping to hear about the points - that it's similar to the Gold Plan. We used that last time, so we're familiar with how it works. Also good to have a heads-up on checking our room-service bill since we'll probably use that once or twice.

I completely understand that it can be somewhat of a hassle. I'm planning our 3 nights/4 days soooooooo carefully to make sure that we can fit everything in that we want. We're trying to do 3 tours out of the 4 days; one is only offered the day we switch hotels so we have to make it to the Poly, check-in, then make it to AK early - figuring out logistics is a pain!! Fortunately I like to plan, we did okay on the Gold Plan last year as far as running around, plus we have 7 days before it starts to take it easy. I can't imagine trying to plan for 10 people though, wow, that would be tough!!!

We always book through the same travel agent, and she's more than happy to make our PS - so for all the ones we're worried about we'll go through her. It's just for some of the stuff like the fireworks cruise and p.seating for Fantasmic that we have to go through the pre-arrival planning or do once we're there and hopefully we'll have an easy time of it...

Thanks again, and good luck planning